


About the Blueberries

by thegodswelost



Series: The Little Things [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, BAMF Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Post-Avengers (2012), Protective Thor (Marvel), Thor (Marvel) Has PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25404811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegodswelost/pseuds/thegodswelost
Summary: The other Avengers keep bypassing Jarvis and getting into (formerly) Stark Tower. Tony wants to know how they're doing it. Unfortunately, it's not a how, but a why. He'll figure that out eventually.In the meantime, he might just learn a thing or two about his teammates.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: The Little Things [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839388
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	1. Not a Flaw

“She’ll come back,” a voice says, and Tony drops the blueberries he’d been holding with a flinch, head jerking around. 

Clint leaps down from a shadowed corner of the ceiling. He tucks, rolls over his back, and lands on the balls of his feet. 

“Hawkeye, what the grape? Thought you were some archenemy come to murder me.” Tony’s been substitute swearing with food items ever since Cap started calling him out on it. Actually ever since the dare to see how long Tony could go without swearing. So far, 39 days.

Clint flicks something onto the table and it catapults one of the blueberries toward Tony’s chest. Tony catches it awkwardly, noting the marble now rolling over the tabletop.

“She’ll come back, Stark.”

Tony sets the blueberry down, recalling his lack of desire to eat them. He’d been debating about throwing them away. “Who?” he asks, though his voice comes out a bit more strained than he’d intended.

“Pepper. She’ll come back, just give her time.” It’s late, or early, and Tony hadn’t bothered with more than one overhead light. Clint rolls his shoulders in shadow, reaching over his shoulder to grab his bow and open it with a practiced jerk.

“You’re a telepath, right? That’s why you’re really on the team? Because there’s no way you could know I was thinking about Pepper just then.” Even this tiny conversation feels practiced and exhausting.

“I’m not a telepath.” Clint has the stance of a soldier awaiting orders and a face that Tony hasn’t quite figured out how to read. His head tilts, bird-like. Almost curious. He flicks a marble that bounces off Tony’s forehead. “I’m just not blind.”

Tony grunts in surprise as the marble hits him, his apathy dulling with the sharp spark of anger and annoyance. The marble falls to the floor with a clack and Tony throws a blueberry at the archer in retaliation. “Not blind?!  _ I _ didn’t even know I was thinking about Pepper until you said.”

Clint catches the blueberry and sets it on the counter, rolling it. 

Tony watches it come to a stop right beside the rest of the blueberries. 

“She’s allergic to strawberries,” Clint says, and that’s all the explanation he gives. All he needs. He rolls his shoulders again, turning toward the door. “Came to use your practice range.”

Tony’s eyes pinch in confusion. He glances toward the stove, where the time is displayed in bright numbers. Clint vanishes through the door ahead of Tony’s sputtering protests. “It’s three in the morning!”

Only Jarvis catches the upward curve at the corner of Clint’s mouth.

Tony, wondering how the archer snuck in and telling Jarvis that he might as well turn on the lights, glances at the corner the archer appeared in. “Is that an arrow in my wall? Were you sitting on that? Clint!?”

Clint is gone and Tony is too tired to go after him. He looks down at the blueberries. 

It was a thing. Buying them in bulk to show Pepper that he wasn’t going to forget things like allergies again, always having them around, eating and offering them. Trying to convince Pepper that he didn’t even like strawberries, that blueberries were his favorite thing, trying to remind himself to think of her more, to be better.

Hadn’t worked as well as he’d wanted it to, clearly. 

Tony’s not sure she will come back. 

But he picks up the blueberries and puts them back in the fridge, just in case he needs the reminder again.

* * *

In the end, it seems everything is a shade of gray. Steve shades the building in, relieved, somehow, that though the world he draws has changed, what he uses to draw it has managed to stay the same. Relieved that the feel of a pencil is still more familiar than the feel of a punch when so many other things just aren’t.

He hears Tony coming and doesn’t bother to turn, focusing instead on the back and forth motion of lines. Almost like swaying. 

“Cap?”

Back and forth and back and forth. Up and out and back. Like the steps to a dance. “Steve when I’m out of costume, Tony. Unless you want me to call you Ironman.” Steve keeps his focus on his paper and subject.

“What are you doing here, Steve?”

Steve nods his head toward the window. “Skyline. Best view in all New York, and I should know, I’ve been thrown around enough of it.”

Tony comes up behind Steve, eyeing his work over his shoulder. He’s silent for a moment longer than Steve has ever heard him be when fully conscious and not preoccupied with work. “I didn’t know you could draw.”

Steve doesn’t shrug, instead darkening the corner of the building he’s working on. Everything Gray. “I don’t really get the chance anymore.”

Tony hums. The hum of an inventor, of a hundred million solutions all whirring to life at once. 

“I don’t mind,” Steve says, the words practiced and easy. Steve doesn’t even feel them anymore; barely notices as they slip past his lips, more a gray blur than anything else. One he doesn’t bother to bring into focus.

Tony hums again. Softer, slower. And then his eyes narrow. “How did you get in? I wasn’t alerted.”

The world snaps into focus. Steve smiles as his pencil strokes in another ugly-ass building. “A little birdie told me about a security flaw. I’d fix it if I wasn’t so busy taking advantage of it.”

“Flaw?” Tony asks. “There’s no flaw. And if by ‘birdie’ you mean Hawkeye, I’ve been dying to know how he’s getting around Jarvis.”

Steve smiles wider, knowing full well that Clint doesn’t get around anything. “There’s no need to sound so offended, Tony. Artificial intelligence is… well, artificial. Can’t compare to the real thing.”

“Oh lemon. Brains are basically just computers anyway, even the philosophers agree.”

Tony is goading him. Daring him to prove the opposite by pointing out the flaw in the design. Steve just smiles and draws. “I pinky promised, Tony. You’re not getting anything from me.”

Tony hums.

* * *

“I wouldn’t call it a flaw.” Nat shrugs even as she dives and tucks, sweeping out Happy’s legs as she passes. She pops back up. “More like a…” she moves her hand as she searches for the word, dodging Happy’s tired punch without even turning to look at him. Her head tilts toward the ceiling as she kicks Happy’s leg out and sends him back to the floor. “Clint, what’s that word…” she slips into Russian.

Tony scoffs. “Clint’s not—” 

A formless voice responds from up high, also in Russian.

Tony scowls blindly at the rafters. “What the grape, Clint?”

“Use,” Nat says, turning back to Tony. “It’s useful. Exploitable. But not for enemies. It’s like a tool that only good guys get.”

Happy groans from the ground. “It’s nothing to worry about, Boss.”

“Wha—you know what it is?! You guys told him but not me?!” Tony looks at Nat and the ceiling woundedly. 

“Of course,” Nat says. “He’s head of security.” She’s changed her hair again, still red, but straight and stiff and it doesn’t suit her. 

“ _ My  _ security.”

Clint, the pineapple vulture, snipes from above, “Did you take the title back from Pepper, then?” 

He hits the mark, never misses, and Tony glares at shadows. “Grape you, Clint. Grape you.”

Clint hums. Something whirs to life. “Maybe you should _blueberry_ **_her_**.”


	2. A hint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm sorry, I don't know when my next update will be. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

“Gotta get you some color, Cap.”

“It’s Steve, Tony.” It’s funny how hard Steve tried to get the title. The rank of Captain. How hard he worked to get any rank at all other than civilian. But they’re not at war now, not like that, and Tony is not a soldier. Tony is not a soldier. “Call me Steve.” 

Tony is undaunted. “Some green, some blue, some red. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Lemon, but you could star-spangle the whole deepfried thing.”

Despite being a simple substitute, lemon is all too apt a word, suiting well the pallor of bitterness in Tony’s wallowing stance and words. The barb is flat and poor, the talk of color colorless.

A faded smile finds the corners of Steve’s mouth while his hand traces out the high corners of Oscorp. “You haven’t solved it, then? Jarvis.”

“There’s nothing to solve, he’s working perfectly.”

“I agree.”

“Then how are you getting past him?!”

Steve shakes his head without lifting it from his work. “No one ever said they got past him.” The Oscorp building is all high rises and sharp edges, but tracing it out makes the whole world feel muted, just for a moment. No more screaming of modern things and technologies and neon signs, all vying for his attention. Simple, quiet, grey. Like an old film, one that lets him draw just a little closer to the home that vanished while he slept.

“And I like the black and white."

* * *

“What happened to my couch?”

Nat slurps her blood red drink. “It was uncomfortable. I ordered a new one.”

“It’s green.”

“Complements my hair. Literally.” Another slurp. “It’s also your favorite color.”

“No, it’s not.”

“No. It’s not.” She points the remote at the screen and adds Russian subtitles. “But it is Pepper’s. Complements her hair too.”

Tony scoffs. “Green’s not her…” A split second of doubt is all it takes. Tony’s not sure. He’d thought blue for some reason, but now he’s not sure and Natasha is a super-spy, bound to have discovered the information one way or another. “Is it?”

Nat throws the empty drink over her shoulder and into the trash can, her focus seemingly on the television. “Maybe you should ask her.”

* * *

“Bruce.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I—”

“The answer is no, Tony.” Bruce doesn’t bother to look up. Doesn’t have the wherewithal to be bothered. 

“Flapjack.”

One moment. Just one moment of peace, of calm. One unburdened moment that never comes. 

“Okay, seriously. Bruce.”

Bruce bristles, pulling back the anger. Falling back to unbothered. “I’m not your keeper, Tony. Don’t whine at me.”

But Tony doesn’t give up. Doesn’t let go of an idea, however small, however unrealized. “Just one little snippet of information, that’s all I’m asking.”

“Ask someone else.”

A hesitation in Tony’s throat. Borne in his fingers where they’re holding a bag of blueberries, slowing as he reaches for one. Stopping. “They keep redirecting me,” he says. But there’s a weight of words that he doesn’t say and they sit unborn in the space between Tony and blueberries.

Bruce is too tired to be bothered, but Tony’s forlorn face hugs his peripheral. Bruce sighs. “Redirecting you where?”

Tony shrugs, too small to be casual though he tries. "Pepper." He lowers the blueberries a little. “I don’t want to bother her. Give me a hint, just one word.”

The anger is muted now, the annoyance weary. Bruce doesn’t have the wherewithal for this, but commiseration bites at him. He takes his glasses off and rubs at the bridge of his nose before putting them back on. “Love. That’s your word. Now leave me alone.” 

“One word for what’s up with Jarvis.”

Bruce nods tiredly. “That’s what I gave you.”

* * *

Tony is back half a moment later. “Love?”

A sigh is wrung from Bruce’s form. He slumps into a seat. “Love.”

An itch sits in Tony’s skin, and he shifts about restlessly. “You have to tell me more than that.”

Bruce grows rigid, his lips curling. “I don’t  _ have _ to tell you anything, your life is your own. I’m not responsible for—”

Tony stills. He thinks and doesn’t need the hum. “If this is about those kids…”

“It’s not!”

This is where Tony argues. Where he experiments with pokes and prods and jabs guaranteed to prove his theory. Tony moves forward only to remember when his hand crinkles that he’s holding something. He looks at the bag in his hand and thinks of the person he pushed away. The one who hasn’t come back. A hum catches in his throat, all designs of discovery abandoned. The bag tips forward. “Blueberry?”

* * *

"You don't have to stop being you, you know."

Tony half jumps out of his skin, but then he flops his arm back down when he recognizes Clint, torn between playing it off and looking annoyed. His voice manages to draw that edge into frustration.  _ "What?" _

"Just because you're trying to be _ better _ doesn't mean you have to stop being  _ you _ ."

Tony is running on fumes, his patience sputtering. "The f-the  _ grape fudge _ are you talking about, Clint? And Jarvis, would you get your quiche together? Intruder! In my living room!"

Clint's head tilts, annoying and pigeon-like. There's something in his hand, probably a marble because he's taken to using them as projectiles for some reason. "It's like the swearing thing," he says. "You stopped swearing but you still express yourself, you still get the sentiment across, it's just... kinder."

Something small and round gets lobbed into the air. A marble, pinballing its way to Tony's fumbling hand.

"Be a better you, not a poor someone else."

Tony scoffs. He throws the marble up and catches it, finding that he enjoys the mindlessness of the movement. "You read that on a fortune cookie somewhere?"

A small smile forms on Clint's face. "Girlfriend told me," he says.

The marble stills in Tony's hand and he frowns as his mind starts up again. "I didn’t know you had a..."

Clint's smile grows a smidgen wider. "I didn't say it was  _ my _ girlfriend."

**Author's Note:**

> I have more written for this but I'm not sure when I'll update or finish it, please don't expect anything soon. Thank you for reading.


End file.
